Fog's NPC Crewman and the Worst Day Ever.
Preface: This story comes from the second session Fog's most recent Dark Heresy campaign. The player party has been detained by the ship's head of security while traveling through the Warp on-board a passenger transport to their assigned destination. The security head accuses the party of tampering with the ship's Gellar Field, freaks the fuck out, and then blows his brains out against the wall. Shortly after the ship's alarms begin to blare and the party escapes the security head's office, leaving into a corridor outside where they encounter a lone guard rounding the corner... Please f''orgive the quality of the writing if you find anything heretical as I wrote it many moons ago. '' Story The day started like any other. I woke to the monotonous voice of a pre-recorded woman over the ship's PA system reminding me that, "Each morning presents a new opportunity to better live for the Emperor." I sat up and muttered my daily prayers. I stood and dressed in my crewman's jumpsuit. I left my quarters and crossed the hall to check my shift-reports for the week. Corridor sentry, again, for the next five days… I always dreaded that chore. It was so mundane and tedious. Take a shotgun from the lower armory, take a flak vest from the rack, and stand around a number of compartments making sure passengers aren't snooping around maintenance corridors and ensure that fellow crewmen haven't ducked in to stash a stolen bottle of amasec from the galley in their quarters. Sighing, I drudged down the hall to the crew-lounge on my deck. A few of my shipmates were already there. They stood around, some dully gnawing on brittle hard-tack and some foregoing breakfast to catch a few more moments of sleep with their faces on a table. I crossed the space to the cupboards atop which sat a tin of recaf. Opening the tin I found that, to my absolute horror, it was completely empty. I could hardly contain my rage. Turning around I demanded to know who hadn't fetched another tin from the storeroom. "Calm down mate. There's still a cup left in the percolator," an insufferable frak that worked the upper-decks replied. Moving toward the dilapidated recaf pot I muttered a few choice words about my shipmate and damned his name. I poured the thick black recaf into my tiny metal cup and raised it to my tired lips. Upon my first sip I uncovered yet another horrid inconvenience. The recaf was cold. However, before I could launch another bout of profanities at my shipmates, I was stopped by the dull voice of the PA system once more. "Attention crewmen. Shift one begins in: five minutes," she droned. The room quickly emptied as I hesitantly downed my cold morning recaf. Not expecting to be scheduled for sentry duty a second week in a row I hadn't thought to check the roster ahead of time; normally, when a crewman has sentry duty, they wake up earlier to get their shotgun and flak vest from the armory. So this morning I was very behind. I rushed to the lifts to find that they were out of order so I instead moved to the stairwell and practically leaped down five sets of stairs. Arriving at the armory, out of breath, I swiped my crew-cogs at the hatch and ran inside. Opening the locker for my shift I threw over my shoulder a grimy blue flak vest and grabbed an impractically large shotgun from the rack. I cycled the action and peered into the chamber. Emperor damn it. The arms-master had unloaded the shotgun to clean it and that now meant that I was even more behind this morning. After frantically looking around for a box of shells I decided finally to forget the shells and just take the unloaded shotgun with me to my post. In my entire life I have never actually had a reason to use the damned thing. It'll be fine, I thought. So my frantic rush continued. I mounted a number of other stairs and crossed a few hatchways looking for the compartment number I was assigned to. This time it was the causeway near our ship's tiny brig. After crossing another section of the ship my groggy head was assailed by the atrocious klaxon of the ship's general alarm, blasting and wailing. "What could this be? A drill?," I asked myself. At that time there were no drills scheduled and generally the ship didn't do emergency drills after taking on passengers. Whatever it was, I thought I should definitely hurry. By this time the shift had already started and I didn't want to get lashings for being away from my post. I continued my mad dash. As I did, the alarm hit a fever pitch and finally died out with a spectacular screech. Just as it died though, the hallway lights started flickering and dimming and the deck's generator could be heard groaning and struggling to maintain power. I thought this very strange as I also began to hear noises from the hull. I couldn't afford to worry about it now, I had a job to do. After crossing a few more compartments the numbers started aligning and I found that I was nearing my post. On my rush there, there were crewmen running about everywhere, but again, I didn't think much of it. It wasn't my concern until I reached my station. Finally, nearing my post, I began to walk again. I thought that I had made it so I decided to take a breather. No one saw my tardiness and I felt like I was going to get away with it. But as I rounded the last corner I was met, to my absolute bewilderment, by the grappling and flailing arms of two strong men and an ancient techpriest. A tech priest of all things. One of the men had a hand-cannon he was wielding by the barrel as a club and I could tell that the two were soldiers of the Imperial Guard because they wore Imperial fatigues. However, Guard or not, they were all attacking me, so I scrambled to raise my shotgun and pointed the muzzle at the closest man. I clenched hard and pulled the trigger and my heart sank at the metallic "CLICK" that resonated from the shotgun. Emperor damn it. The shells. I shouldn't have forgone the shells. I was quickly beat by the assailants and put in manacles. One of the Guardsmen, the shorter one, dragged me by the collar into a nearby room. He locked the door and stood over me, hand-cannon ready to splatter my brains across the bulkhead behind. The man started to make demands. "What is going on? Why the alarm? Who are you?" he began, his voice loud and forceful. I thought on his words for a moment and decided to be honest. "I'm just as lost as you are, mate. I don't know what the blasted alarm was going off for. I work on this fraking ship, can't you tell?" I said, pointing with my chin toward my jumpsuit. Sensing my attitude and suddenly annoyed he couldn't get any information from me, he replied. "What kind of guard brings an unloaded shotgun to guard duty? Are you some kind of idiot? How stupid do you have to be?" I was getting really sick of this morning. "Hey I don't come to where you work and slap the cock out of your mouth now do I?" He reeled back at the words and raised his gun to smash me unconscious. Just before everything went black I thought to myself, "...fucking Mondays" Category:Browse Category:Dark Heresy